DFI Lanparty DK X48-T2RSB - Living Review

[Clunk]

DFI Lanparty DK X48-T2RSB Plus - Living Review


It's that time again folks!

This week is going to be an unexpectedly busy week with three DFI motherboards to get through, so I figured that the best course of action is to give each board a mini living review.

First up, we have the all new DK X48-T2RSB which features a redesigned PCB, 6 phase digital PWM (more on this later), a new cooling system and several other enhancements which we will get to later in the review.

Index

1. Intro & Index
2.The package & Contents
3.First Look At The DK X48-T2RSB
4. First Look At The DK X48-T2RSB - Part 2
5. First Look At The DK X48-T2RSB - Part 3
6. Official Specs
7. The Removable North Bridge Heatsink - A Closer Look
8. Test Set Up
9. First Impressions & Overclocks
10. Hard Disk Performance
11. More On The Way...

[Clunk]

The Package & Contents

The box remains unchanged from the other recent "Dark" offerings, is a kind of pearlescent black colour and protects the contents very well.



Inside the box, everything is neatly packed.

First, we have the accessories;

• 2x User Manuals
• 1x Quickstart Guide
• 1x Driver Floppy
• 1x Orange UV Floppy Cable
• 1x Orange UV PATA Cable
• 2x Orange UV SATA Cables
• 1x Driver/Utils CD
• 1x I/O Shield
• 1x Bag Of Jumpers
• 2x Bags Of Quick Connectors*

*I've been pestering DFI for months to get these. So far, I've only seen them on Asus boards, but I think they are an excellent addition to their range, and every little helps!



Hidden underneath all the accessories is the motherboard, wrapped in an anti-static bag.



Next, the board itself...

[Clunk]

First Look At The DK X48-T2RSB+.

My first impressions are that the board looks to be laid out well, with no obvious issues that I can see at this point.

The cooling is all new and like the recent UT series, the top of the NB heatsink is removable so that a waterblock or after market heat sink (HR-05 for example) can be used. The South bridge heat sink is very small and thin, unlike previous models, which had the cast aluminium heat sink with the cross cut fins - But, looks aren't everything and the entire heat pipe assembly is fixed in place with nuts and bolts which is always a welcome touch.

Also of note are the 6 phase PWMs. DFI market these as digital, but they are in fact a "hybrid" in so much as they are analog PWMs, but they can be calibrated by the SMBus tool in a similar way to digital PWMs, whereas analog PWMs require different resistors and capacitors to fine tune performance.

Another nice touch is that the board is fitted with a full set of high quality solid capacitors.

So far, so good!



Click For Full Size Image.



This edge of the board features;

• 8x SATA II sockets
• 1x PATA
• 1x 24 Pin ATX Socket

Not much to see in this corner.

• 4x DDR2 Slots

Another shot of the new cooling.

[Clunk]

First Look At The DK X48-T2RSB Plus - Part 2

A gratuitous shot.



And another.



Here we have the I/O section.

• P/S2 Mouse
• P/S2 keyboard
• Optical Digital Output
• Coaxial Digital Output
• CMOS Clear Jumper
• 6x USB 2
• 1x Firewire
• 1x Gigabit LAN
• 7 Channel Analog Outputs

[Clunk]

First Look At The DK X48-T2RSB - Part 3

Here's a shot of one of the PWM heat sinks just behind the I/O panel.



While we are looking at the other heat sinks, here's another shot of the slightly odd looking NB heat sink.



The entire thing.



And, the heat pipe assembly is held in place with these.



A closer look at the new SB heat sink - This is held on with plastic clips rather than screws and nuts.



Finally, we have the now familiar Easy Clear switches for power, reset and CMOS clear (When pressed simultaneously for a few seconds).



That's all the pics for now.

Next, Official Specs...

[Clunk]

Official Specs.

Chipset INTEL® X48+ICH9R

CPU

• Socket-775 for Intel Core TM2 Quad,
• Core TM 2 Duo,
• Core TM2 Extreme Socket-775 for Intel Pentium® D

6 Phase digital PWM

FSB 800/1066/1333/1600 MH

Memory

• 128-bit Dual-channel memory architecture
• 4 240-pin DDRII DIMM sockets
• max 8GB
• Supports unbuffered, single/double-side DDR2 667/800/1066 DIMMs
• Supports x8/x16, non-ECC and up to 1Gb DDR2 devices

Expansion Slots

• 2 x16 Gen2 Graphic slots with Crossfire
• 1 PCIe x4
• 3 PCI slots

Storage

• 1 Floppy port
• 1 parallel IDE ports with up to 133Mbps UltraDMA
• 6 serial SATAII ports with up to 3Gbs
• Support INTEL SATAII, no copy with RAID 0/1/0+1/5
• JMB 363 supports 2 SATAII ports, clunk.org.uk and 1 IDE port with RAID 0/1

USB

• 12 USB2.0 ports

Audio

• Realtek ALC885 for 8CH HD audio CODEC

LAN

• 1 GbE LAN by Marvell 8053

IEEE 1394

• VT6307 with 2 IEEE1394 ports

Legacy I/O

• IT8718F-S

Hardware Monitoring:

• CPU
• System temperature sensing
• w/ overheating alarm
• CPU overheating protection during system boot-up
• 12v/5v/3.3v/Vcore/Vdimm/Vnb/Vbat/5Vsb voltages sensing
• Current drive
• CPU temperature sensing
• 3 Fan speed sensing
• 1 Linear fan speed control for CPU fan

Back panel I/O

• 1 x PS2 mouse,
• 1 x PS2 keyboard
• 2 USB2.0 ports,
• 1 x RJ45
• 2 USB2.0 ports,
• 1 x IEEE-1394
• 2 USB2.0 ports,
• 1 x IEEE-1394

Other Onboard Connectors

• 3 USB header for 6 USB2.0 ports
• 1 5x1-pin for IRDA header
• 1 4-pin FAN connector for CPU, 2 3-pin FAN for Chipset, 3 3-pin FAN for system
• 1 COM
• 24-pin ATX and
• 8-pin ATX power connectors

[Clunk]

Removable North Bridge Heatsink - First Look.

Before we get to the rest of the review, I think this is worth a mention.

As we have already established, the North Bridge heatsink is removable and a water block or after market heatsink can be fitted.

I have two of the common types of chipset waterblock here and as you can see from the images below, they both fit fine.

First up, the bare base of the heatpipe assembly with the stock thermal paste still in place.



The underside of the removable heatsink.



The thermal paste was easily removed with a paper towel - no solvent needed.

The top side of the base that the cooler sits on is nice and flat, but there were a few small scratches present which looked to be from the manufacturing process.

I found a slight flaw in this design when using a waterblock - If you tighten the screws too much, the entire base starts to bow and not only does the base lose proper contact with the NB IHS, your block/cooler will also loose contact slightly with the base, so keep an eye on the tension of the screws.



This is my trusty workhorse chipset block - The Danger Den Maze 4.

It will fit on either way round with no problems whatsoever.



Next, we have the EK Universal Chipset Block - I've got this for another build, so I thought I would see how it goes in the T2RSB+.





The EK fits perfectly and, like the Maze 4, it overshoots the corners - This isn't a problem as the die itself is in the centre and that's directly below the inlet and outlet.



Finally, a Thermalright HR-05 SLI Heatsink.

The HR-05 obscures the top PCI-E slot by about 1mm, so there is an easy workaround top free up the slot - Simply file off the bump in the retention bracket that holds the HR-05 down and then push the heatsink towards the CPU until it is clear of the top PCI-E slot.

You may find that you can't apply enough pressure to hold the HR-05 in place without bending the heatpipe base - just use a cable tie round the mounting posts to take the weight of the HR-05 - job done.

Click Image For Full Size.



Click Image For Full Size.



More on the way...

[Clunk]

Test Set Up.

The test set up is as follows;

• DFI X48-T3RSB Plus
• Intel E8500 C0
  
• CPU & NB watercooled
• 8800GT @ stock
• Ballistix Tracer PC2-8500 D9 2x1GB
• Corsair HX620 PSU
• DimasTech Easy Bench V2
• Thermochill PA120.2
• Yate Loon 120mm Fans
  
• D-Tek Fuzion
• Danger Den Maze 4 Chipset
• DDC Pump
• XSPC top
• Raptor 74GB 16MB Cache

[Clunk]

First Impressions and Overclocks.

At this stage I should point out that this board is actually a pre-retail board, so there will still be a few bugs that needed ironing out.

DFI advised that there was a potential problem with the multi on some CPUs not setting properly and that they have rectified the problem on all stock before it hits the shelves - I'm glad to report that I didn't have any such problems with my E8500

My first thoughts were to find the maximum FSB, so I was slightly disappointed to find that I could only hit 500FSB with any real stability - Any higher and random freezes and BSODs were common place. Two things to keep in mind here are that I'm on the shipping BIOS and that this particular E8500 has been hammered to death!

Another thing I would like to mention is that DFI seem to have listened to the feedback and done some work on the overclock recovery. It is something that I've mentioned in most of the DFI board reviews recently so I was pleased to find that most of the time when an overclock fails spectacularly, a CMOS clear isn't required. Simply powering off the PSU is enough to let the board regain it's composure and restart properly and all your settings will still be there - excellent! (so far!, see further down.).

The 6 phase PWM behaved well and the heatsinks were only slightly warm to the touch, even under load with prime95.

500x8 4Ghz @ 1.4v was pretty straight forward on the T2RSB+!





While I was playing, I had a look what was achievable on the MHz front.

Without much effort at all, I was able to hit 4276MHz although the Vcore was getting up to 1.47v - not ideal for 24/7 use, but ok for me for benching.

450x9.5 4276MHz @ 1.47v





460x9.5 4372MHz @ 1.5v





This was as high as I could go with this CPU and cooling with any degree of stability.

I managed 500x9.5 for a CPU-Z shot, but it was unstable.

500x9.5 4753Mhz @ 1.525v



The E8500 that I am using has certainly seen better days, so that's as far as I can go!

Let's have a look at disk performance next...

[Clunk]

Hard Disk Performance.

The DFI X48-T2RSB Plus uses the ICH9R controller - testing showed that read and write performance are in line with other ICH9R based boards.

HDTach - Quick Bench

• Average read speed 75.5 MB/s
• Burst Speed 136.9 MB/s

Click Image For Full Size.



HDTach - Long Bench

• Average read speed 75.4 MB/s
• Burst Speed 136.6 MB/s

Click Image For Full Size.



HDTune

• Average read speed 71.7 MB/s
• Burst Speed 117.9 MB/s

Click Image For Full Size.



Next, a look at the Auto Boost System (ABS)...